Pearl Harbor radar men are reunited in Allentown

WAR STORIES

70 years after 'day of infamy,' Pearl Harbor radar men are reunited in Allentown

December 03, 2011|By David Venditta, Of The Morning Call

Schimmel left Oahu to spend six months on Canton Island, near American Samoa, and returned to Hawaii. He became a staff sergeant and altogether spent 41/2 years overseas.

Back home in Allentown, he worked as a Sears appliance salesman. He has two sons. His wife, Yolanda, died last year.

Tyler, the lieutenant at the Fort Shafter information center, was not disciplined for disregarding Lockard's report. But his role that day dogged him until his death last year at age 96.

"I wake up nights sometimes and think about it," Tyler told the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., in 2007. "But I don't feel guilty. I did all I could that morning."

Elliott, Lockard's partner at Opana, died in 2003.

McDonald died in 1994. He was long troubled that he hadn't done more when the radar warning came in, said Schimmel, who stayed in touch with him. "He used to call me up a lot of times and say, 'I should have gone over their heads.' I told him he couldn't do that."

Lockard and Schimmel saw each other in June at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's World War II Weekend near Reading. Lockard and McKenney traveled together to Hawaii in 1991 for the Pearl Harbor 50th anniversary. Schimmel was also there, but the three didn't link up.

Asked if anything would have been different if the military authorities had heeded the radar warning, Schimmel said: "If [our] airplanes could have been sent up, we would have had more power in the air. … We still would have been attacked, and we would have been outnumbered, but I think we would have had a much better fight, and we would have saved a lot of ships."

McKenney has said the outcome might have been different if the brass had fully embraced radar.

"There should have been serious attention from a level higher than ours into what the purpose of the equipment was. The essentials were there, [but] there was no commitment. It was just haphazard."

According to Lockard, the damage the Japanese did might have been reduced.

"There's no way you can fire up a battleship and get it out of the harbor in that short a time. But there would be the possibility of having more intense antiaircraft artillery firing at these attacking planes, which may have kept them farther away from the ships, [resulting in] less damage."

During their afternoon together in Allentown, the three men remembered former comrades with names like Winterbottom, Upson, Hilton, Shoemaker. They spoke of places they had known on Oahu — Koko Head, Haleiwa, the Kolekole Pass, Schofield Barracks. They laughed about the enlisted man's lot — pay that was so meager they couldn't afford a taxi to Honolulu.